Month: December 2005

On December 12, 2005, about 50 people attended a candle light vigil against the death penalty held at the Town Clock in Santa Cruz. The Santa Cruz Chapter of Death Penalty Focus displayed banners that read, “The State will kill Stanley Tookie Williams in your name tonight!” and “Truth Not Vengeance”.

Stanley Tookie Williams III was executed in the early morning on December 13 by lethal injection administered by the state of California.

On December 8, anti-corporate Christmas carolers performed some of their greatest hits, including Consumer Wonderland, God Bless You Very Wealthy Men and Some of my Favorite Things in front of the GAP on Pacific Avenue in downtown Santa Cruz.

This was the first of three nights of Anti-Corporate Xmas Caroling with Santa Cruz’s Art & Revolution Street Theatre Collective.

On December 6, 2005, the US Supreme Court began to decide the constitutionality of the Solomon Amendment which denies federal funding for schools that don’t allow military recruitment on campus in the case of FAIR v Rumsfeld. Rallies and marches were held nationwide in solidarity with the counter-recruitment activists in the Supreme Court case.

The Santa Cruz Chapter of the Buddhist Peace Fellowship has created a scroll with 28,000 names in Arabic of Iraqi civilians who have died in the war. This is one of the most conservative of the reported numbers of Iraqi civilian deaths.

As part of the nationwide day of action, the scroll was displayed at the military recruitment center on 41st Avenue in Capitola along with other signs and banners opposing the continued war in Iraq and the daily loss of Iraqi and American lives.

On November 30, 2005, Santa Cruz was declared as a “World City Against the Death Penalty” by Santa Cruz Mayor, Mike Rotkin. Santa Cruz is one of more than 300 cities worldwide calling for an end to the death penalty.

About thirty people came to Santa Cruz City Hall to protest the planned execution of Stanley “Tookie” Williams and speak out against the death penalty. David Sweet introduced local activists including Ray Glock-Gruenich, Darrell Darling, Betsy Fairbanks, Emily Malony, Wanda Conaway-Knight, Sandino Gomez and Kenny Swain.